Reduction of Brazilian Portuguese Vowels in Semantically Predictable Contexts

Ten adult Brazilian Portuguese speakers were recorded producing the same words in contexts of relatively high and low semantic predictability. Significant vowel reduction in the former context was uncovered in the case of two of the three vowel types examined. The reduction of these vowels, /e/ and /a/, was both spectral and temporal. We describe some subtle parallels and differences between the semantically-oriented vowel reduction patterns in Portuguese and those in the other two languages in which such patterns are documented. Our results demonstrate that semantically based vowel reduction exists in Portuguese, and that interesting patterns in this type of reduction can be uncovered via cross-linguistic analysis of the phenomenon.